subject: Printer And Copier Technology Is Much More Sophisticated Than In The Days Of Dot Matrix Printing [print this page] The printed word has been an instrument to bring widespread literacy and the spread of information since the invention of the printing press by Gothenberg in the 15th Century.
Previously records had been kept on parchment, made out of dried and cured animal skins, which were expensive, hand-lettered and illustrated making the production of documents slow, costly to produce or copy and therefore exclusive. Nowadays we take for granted the easy access that printer/copiers provide for documents used in the home, in schools, or in offices.
Nevertheless in spit of the much-hyped advent of the paperless office with the development of internet technology, file sharing and online document storage there are times when an old-fashioned piece of paper with printed words on it is still needed. Printed copies of important documents generated on a PC became much easier to produce with the advent of the photocopier and printer, allowing production of multiple copies within the office or home without the need to go to a commercial printer or typesetting.
Dot matrix printers were the first form of copy printing to be used in the early 1970s and worked by activating small pins in the printer head that physically stamped the ink onto the page. There is some doubt about who actually invented the dot matrix printing system. Generally, though, the consensus is that it was the Japanese company Epson. By today's standards they were fairly unsophisticated and very slow.
For most home and office printing they have been replaced by inkjet and laser printing technology, but they are still used in shops at checkout tills and in bank ATM machines. Their main disadvantages included slow speed, noise, low quality print, particularly for pictures and frequent paper jams. The slow speed was because each dot was individually printed, so it took time to print even one page of paper.
Because the method involved metal keys striking the paper noise was also a significant problem especially for a larger, office printer. The paper feed mechanism and paper jamming were also a common problem because in the early days the paper was a roll fixed in place through holes along its edges and held there by pins on two wheels that fed the paper through the machine. Even the smallest tear or misalignment could cause a jam that was a messy business to fix.
There were some technological improvements over time. They boosted the carriage speed, added more type options, and increased the dot density from 60dpi (dots per inch) up to 240dpi.
Inevitable although fster carriage speeds brought faster printing, they also increased the volume of noise. Nowadays, of course, apart from very specific and simple uses, the dot matrix printer has been largely replaced by ink jet and laser printing.
For the home or office PC user the most economic form of printer is the inkjet printer. Inkjet printers contain cartridges for black and colour printing, depending on the type of printer. Cartridges spray ink onto the paper, greatly reducing the noise factor and speeding up printing.
The result is much better quality print at much faster speeds and good quality colour printing including photographs and other visual images and all at a much lower cost.
